Bet some of you are going all "What happened to BROB? It's gone! Game over, man! We're screwed!"

Worry not, you can now find it on the main forum list as "Roleplaying and Quests", under Creative Forums, so in the same place as Creative Writing and Story Debates. You'll also find an OOC sub-forum there to keep things less cluttered as well.

We all know that hyperdrive is faster than bog-standard warp, but is it superior to a quantum slipstream drive?

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Tell me how fast QSD is. Darth Maul's mere .2 class hyperdrive equipped Sith Infiltrator made a ~33,000LY trip in a matter of 18 hours (travelled from Coruscant to Tatooine in the space of noon the day before the podrace and pre-dawn the day of the race), for a speed of approximately 16,071,279 times the speed of light.

Palpatine's trip to Mustafar is considerably more insane (~45,000LY IIRC in far, far less time), as is Padme's before that.

It depends on which QSS drive you're talking about. From VOY's Hope and Fear the one on Arturus's ship travelled over 15 lightyears in 30 seconds from the very first accidental test. We don't have exact figures on how far it managed to travel when headed back to Arturus's homeworld, but we know Voyager (which had made an equivelant slipstream drive) travelled back to catch up to Arturus's ship, then afterwards used it to get as close to home as possible. They remained in the slipstream for an hour and wound up 300 lightyears closer to home. Unfortunately we have no point of reference to say how fast this trip was since we don't know how far Arturus's homeworld was from the point they started at, but using the first example (if I did my math correctly), that works out to about 15,768,000 c.

Then we have the QSS drive developed in VOY's Timeless which incorporated Borg technology. This drive would be able to travel something like 30-40 thousand lightyears in a matter of minutes (maybe roughly closer to 1/2 an hor or so?), but we have no exact figures AFAIK. Nevertheless, this one would obviously be considerably faster than the one above.

For the first drive, it would take 66.66 hours to get from one end of the SW galaxy to the next (the SW galaxy being 120,000 lightyears across).

And just FYI, Borg and Voth transwarp drives are even faster than Arturus's QSS drive.

EDIT.

I would also add that in the faked Starfleet message Arturus made, it said that it would take a full 3 months to get from Voyagers location to Earth - just to illustrate the massive difference between the 2 slipstream drives. Of course it was a faked message, but it makes sense Arturus would make the message as realistic as possible to fool the Voyager crew, and thus use an accurate figure for the slipstream drive.

And just for the hell of it, Voth transwarp allows a ship to travel 90 lightyears in 20 seconds. That works out to 141,912,000 c. Or 7.4 hours to cross the SW galaxy.

Borg transwarp coils, going by my previous calcs are anywhere from 500 million c on the lower end to about 4 billion c on the high end.

There are at least three quantum-slipstream drives that I know of, and one of them is intergalactic (but not included in Star Trek, but rather in Andromeda).

I'd say that QSS example one provided by Vivftp above would be equal to a slower version, like those used in the eras of the Jedi Civil War. While the second example provided above seems to be about equal to some faster hyperdrive speeds (the 0.5 used by the Millennium Falcon for example). However, Star Wars has a blanket advantage due to QSS and Transwarp being rather rare, while Hyperdrive is the most common denominator of FTL speed.

Either way, with or without the faster ftl speeds, it's just not winnable. The Empire is still much bigger and stronger than anything in Star Trek (save for the Tkon Empire [comparable to the Culture in several respects] and Q).

Either way, with or without the faster ftl speeds, it's just not winnable. The Empire is still much bigger and stronger than anything in Star Trek (save for the Tkon Empire [comparable to the Culture in several respects] and Q).

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I don't believe anyone's really mentioned an actual fight between ST and SW in any way - but only a comparison between the 2 FTL techs.

As for the T'Kon, they're a big unknown. Their population supposedly was in the trillions and they were rumoured to be capable of moving stars, but we have nothing solid to really use. Hell, the fact that a single supernova (apparently in their home system) signalled their downfall indicates things may not have been all peachy keen for them.

Anyways, other than the possibility of moving stars, I don't see much to indicate the T'Kon really had anything on the level of the Culture. The Portal we saw in the episode didn't give us much to go by either.

There's no beating the Asgard, but I looked up Mustafar's distance to the core- it's 53,000LY. Coruscant is 10,000LY from the core, so conservatively (it may be more if a starship has to travel across the core from the other side, as opposed to both planets being on the same side).

The scene immediately prior to Palpatine's order to ready his shuttle is where Anakin and Obi-Wan are struggling on the Mustafar gantry, here:

Palpatine gives the order to Mas Ammeda to tell Captain Kagi to prepare his shuttle for immediate takeoff at 1.50.53, after Yoda ran away from him:

From 1.50.54, it's back to Anakin and Obi-Wan, still fighting on the gantry:

The gantry soon falls into the lava river (same scene), as the shields have been deactivated due to their fight in the control room earlier:

At around 1.51.41, it's back to Yoda making his escape from the Senate. He's picked up by Bail and off they go. Then it's back to the lava river at 1.52.08:

The scene doesn't change again. Anakin is defeated at 1.54.50 or thereabouts.

We know that Obi-Wan knows even as Anakin is burning that Palpatine has arrived (novelization). Obviously, Anakin could not have been sitting on the lava river bank for hours in any event, as he would've surely died without medical attention which Palpatine was there to provide. In the movie we see Palpatine's shuttle going in for landing after Obi-Wan takes Padme's skiff away.

At most, there can and should be a several minute lapse in between the two gantry in lava river scenes, providing for the amount of time it took the gantry to reach the lava fall, as well as the time it would take for Palpatine to reach his ship and depart.

Speed? Aw heck, let's make it an even 30 minutes, even though that's way too high (Obi-Wan and Anakin were most assuredly not fighting on the floating gantry for half an hour!)

Daedalus: 3 million light years in 18 days - 61,000,000 c
Daedalus with ZPM: 3 million light years in 4 days - 274,000,000 c
Asgard Beliskner: 3 million light years in 3 minutes* - 526,000,000,000 c

That's assuming the Asgard home galaxy is about as far from the Milkyway as Pegasus.

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Leo1 said:

There's no beating the Asgard

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Heh, well we could always use the Traveller-assisted thought propelled warp jumps from the TNG episode Where No One Has Gone Before. On the first jump they travelled 2.7 million lightyears in 43 seconds, which puts their speed at about 1,980,167,441,860.46 (just about 2 trillion) c.

Then we have the second warp jump which lasted 22 seconds and Picard stated their location was over a billion lightyears from their galaxy. So using 1 billion as a low end, we get 1,433,454,545,454,545.45 (1.4 quadrillion) c.

Then of course that feat is reproduced at the end of the episode to send the Enterprise home.

So while it may not be a means of propulsion currently used by normal Trek races, it is hinted at by the Traveller that humans would eventually be there in their far distant future - so it could be these feats will someday be duplicatable by Federation vessels.

So while it may not be a means of propulsion currently used by normal Trek races, it is hinted at by the Traveller that humans would eventually be there in their far distant future - so it could be these feats will someday be duplicatable by Federation vessels.

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There's the "infinite speed" Voyager salamander drive. They only need to fix the whole turning into a slug thing.

The Asgard Galaxy is stated to be 4 million light years away in the episode Enemies.

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It's possible that it was the Asgard Galaxy. But as far as I recall there was no specific mention that it was. The only thing to suggest that it was, was that it was infested with Replicators. It's also possible that it was a different galaxy and the Replicators were there to attack another civilization (ie, the one that built the ship the Replicators used to attack Apophis's mothership).

Thait said:

pegasus is listed as 4 million light years away as well not 3 million.

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Well I was just going by the distance to the two Pegasus Dwarf galaxies in the local group. One is 2.6 mil ly away and the other is about 3.3 mil ly away. The only actual comment about distance that I can recall from Atlantis is from the episode "Suspicion" when McKay says, "We are stranded with limited resources in another galaxy. Come on, the nearest Bob's Big Boys is 300 million light years away." I just dismissed that as a bit of an exaggeration though. Was there another episode that actually mentioned the distance?

Well I was just going by the distance to the two Pegasus Dwarf galaxies in the local group. One is 2.6 mil ly away and the other is about 3.3 mil ly away. The only actual comment about distance that I can recall from Atlantis is from the episode "Suspicion" when McKay says, "We are stranded with limited resources in another galaxy. Come on, the nearest Bob's Big Boys is 300 million light years away." I just dismissed that as a bit of an exaggeration though. Was there another episode that actually mentioned the distance?

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I'm not sure the Pegasus dwarf that orbits Andromeda is the same as the one in SGA. In the recent episode where the Daedalus and Orion engaged two Hive ships outside the galaxy we see a spiral shaped galaxy in the background, not a dwarf.

Also, from the season 9 episode with the diplomats at the gamma site and those crazed underground bugs, the Oddyssey had to travel 25,000 lightyears in either four or five hours. I originally calced that out to ~42 million c.

And just FYI, Borg and Voth transwarp drives are even faster than Arturus's QSS drive.

Borg transwarp coils, going by my previous calcs are anywhere from 500 million c on the lower end to about 4 billion c on the high end.

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This shouldn't be surprising given the Borg assimilated Species 116 (Arturis's race) which used Quantum Slipstream, and would then argueably have had access to the entire infrastructure of their civilization which produced these drives (and argueably improve upon it).

Assuming the Borg even needed that much to begin with.

Nonetheless, the Borg clearly have an enormous strategic advantage over virtually any other races in the speed arena, and that's not even counting their Transwarp Hub systems.

Makes one further appreciate the reasons why the Borg seemingly have no worries about assimilating and making enemies out of thousands of species within the Milky Way.

They never figured out a way to drop out of warp 10 at a specific location, so the drive is pretty much useless without further tests - and there's no guarantee it is possible to drop out of warp 10 at a specific location.

They never figured out a way to drop out of warp 10 at a specific location, so the drive is pretty much useless without further tests - and there's no guarantee it is possible to drop out of warp 10 at a specific location.

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But they DID come out of warp 10 at a specific location. On the first flight, Tom Paris wanted to go back to Voyager, which he did. And the second flight while he was in the final stages of turning into a slug, he would have naturally wanted to go to a planet with the appropriate environment for that form, which he did.

The only reasonable explanation for not doing further study into the warp 10 drive is the slug-mutation. Although they did find a way to reverse it, it may not be 100% certain to work so they didn't want to risk anymore pilots.

Even with the slug mutation problem, there had to be some other problem stopping them from continuing to use it. If it worked they could have programmed the shuttle to run on autopilot and used it to communicate with Starfleet Command as a sort of courier.

But they DID come out of warp 10 at a specific location. On the first flight, Tom Paris wanted to go back to Voyager, which he did. And the second flight while he was in the final stages of turning into a slug, he would have naturally wanted to go to a planet with the appropriate environment for that form, which he did.

The only reasonable explanation for not doing further study into the warp 10 drive is the slug-mutation. Although they did find a way to reverse it, it may not be 100% certain to work so they didn't want to risk anymore pilots.

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Not exactly:

JANEWAY: How did you get back to Voyager?
PARIS: I saw that you were looking for me, so I took the new engines off-line and ended up back where I started.

He didn't actually do anything to drop out of warp 10 other than simply take the new engines offline, and he wound up where he started.

As for finding an appropriate planet, we know from the first test that he could pretty much see everything, everywhere:

PARIS: Oh, yeah. I was, I was staring at the velocity indicator. It said warp 10. And then, as I watched it, I suddenly realised that I was watching myself as well. I could see the outside of the shuttle. I-I could see Voyager. I could see inside Voyager. I could see inside this room. For a moment, I was everywhere. I mean everywhere, Captain. With the Kazon, back home, with the Klingons, other galaxies. It was all there. I don't know how else to explain it. It was like... Well, no, it wasn't like anything.

So if he's looking for the perfect planet to suit the mutations, what are the chances that the most perfect planet in all the universe would be just 3 days travel for Voyager?

The more likely explaination is that we know that upon accelerating towards the warp 10 barrier, the modified shuttle has a top speed which exceeds Voyagers:

So it's more likely that distance equivelant to 3 days of Voyager travelling was due to the shuttles higher velocity just prior to achieving warp 10.

And to further hammer home the point that they never figured out a way to drop out of warp 10 at a specific location:

TORRES: This data describes literally every cubic centimetre in this sector. It's over five billion gigaquads of information.
JANEWAY: It would appear that the theory of infinite velocity is correct. It may be possible to occupy every point in the universe simultaneously.
TORRES: Then it's just a matter of navigation. If we could figure out how to come out of transwarp at a specific point, this could get us home.

The slipstream drive from andromeda allows a ship to travel from the
Milky Way galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy in 3 - 5 mins, with an expericed pilot.
An amatuar will take a few hours.
A really bad pilot will get hopelessly lost.

Meanwhile, the Asgard have been sitting there for 2 minutes wondering whats taking so long, also, they started farther away. Asgard hyperdrive is basically the best out there in sci-fi outside of long-range (as in extragalatic) instant transmission style drives (like the wormhole drive). Can't really count the whole Traveller thought-drive from Trek since by that point the Federation would be sufficently advance energy beings.